“Abortion” vs. “Lifesaving Maternal Healthcare”: Why the Distinction Matters

Question:  If an unborn child is killed in an attempt to save the life of his/her mother, does that really qualify as an “abortion”?

A significant number of obstetricians, gynecologists, and other international experts in maternal healthcare have publicly testified to the fact that an abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of a mother.  In fact, according to the Life Institute in Ireland, “There are NO conditions arising in pregnancy that can ONLY be treated by directly ending the life of the unborn child” [emphasis theirs].  (For more on this, click here.)

According to the following decades-old testimonies of leading medical experts, as compiled by the San Antonio Coalition for Life, modern medicine has virtually eliminated pregnancy-related maternal deaths:

• Dr. Alan Guttmacher of Planned Parenthood did more to promote and spread abortion on demand throughout the world than any other individual.  Over half a century ago, he commented, “Today, it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal disease such as cancer or leukemia, and if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save the life” [emphasis mine].  Certainly, with all of the advances in medicine since 1967, cases in which a pregnancy would genuinely endanger a woman’s life are even rarer today.  (Alan Guttmacher.  “Abortion Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.”  The Case for Legalized Abortion Now.  Berkeley, California:  Diablo Books, 1967, 3.)
  

• In 1990 [read:  three decades ago], former abortionist turned pro-lifer Dr. Bernard Nathanson said, “The situation where the mother’s life is at stake were she to continue a pregnancy is no longer a clinical reality.  Given the state of modern medicine, we can now manage any pregnant woman with any medical affliction successfully, to the natural conclusion of the pregnancy:  the birth of a healthy child” [emphasis mine].  (Bernard Nathanson, M.D.  Written statement to the Idaho House of Representatives’ State Affairs Committee, February 16, 1990.  Also quoted in “Exceptions:  Abandoning ‘The Least of These My Brethren.'”  American Life League booklet, 1991, 22.)
  

• In 1974, the “Father of Fetology,” Hymie Gordon, M.D., Director of Medical Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, said, “In more than 25 years now of medical practice, I have come to learn that if a woman is healthy enough to become pregnant, she is healthy enough to complete the term ― in spite of heart disease, liver disease, almost any disease.  As far as I’m concerned, there are no medical indications for terminating a pregnancy” [emphasis mine].  (Hymie Gordon, M.D., Director of Medical Genetics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, October 15, 1974.)
  

• In 1981, Dr. Jasper Williams, Jr., of the Bernard Hospital in Chicago, Past President of the National Medical Association, said, “Since 1953, I have never seen a patient die because she needed an abortion and it could not be performed.  Doctors now have the tools and the knowledge with which to work so that they can handle almost any disease a patient may have, whether that patient is pregnant or not, and without interrupting the pregnancy” [emphasis mine].  (Jasper Williams, Jr., M.D., Past President of the National Medical Association, Bernard Hospital, Chicago, Illinois, Address of October 19, 1981.)
  

 

To believe that an “abortion” is ever necessary to save the life of a mother is to confuse two fundamentally different things:  (1) emergency medical intervention intended to save or protect human life and (2) the premeditated, deliberate destruction of human life.

“Primum non nocere!  This Latin phrase, meaning ‘First, do no harm,’ is one of the principal precepts guiding all medical intervention.  Like the Hippocratic Oath, which also vows to ‘never do harm,’ it is a reminder that the physician’s role is to heal, not to harm.” —Abort73.com

 

Physicians have an ethical and professional obligation to save as many lives as they possibly can.  Ergo, if only one life can be rescued in an operation involving two patients, that would certainly be better than losing two lives.

When a doctor provides lifesaving medical intervention for a pregnant woman whose physical health is genuinely at risk, say from cancer, the doctor’s responsibility in that scenario is to save the life of the mother while also making every reasonable effort to protect the life of the child she’s carrying.  To be sure, the doctor in such a scenario — assuming he/she is behaving ethically — has no intentions of purposely ending the life of the unborn child.  Remember, the physician’s primary duty is to heal, never to kill.  So, if it turns out that the baby does not survive the emergency maternal surgical procedure (e.g., an operation to remove cervical cancer), it would be completely inaccurate to say that the child’s inadvertent death was the result of an “abortion,” and it would be downright slanderous to refer to the heroic doctor in this situation, who may well be staunchly pro-life, as an “abortionist.”  Neither term applies, because neither the mother nor the surgeon wanted to disrupt the pregnancy and terminate the life of the preborn baby.  That was not the objective of the doctor, and it certainly was not the goal of the mother.

In sharp contrast to medical efforts intended to save human life, an abortion entails the premeditated, intentional killing of an innocent human being.  (That, by the way, is the textbook definition of first-degree murder.)  Thus, an abortion is intended to destroy human life—namely, the life of the preborn child.  To be clear, an abortion always — that is, 100% of the time — kills an innocent human person by design.  In other words, the sole objective of every abortionist/abortion provider, as well as every woman who seeks an abortion, is to terminate the life of an unwanted unborn child as a matter of convenience, not to improve the health or save the life of the mother from a life-threatening medical condition.  Thus, unlike the unborn child who unfortunately dies from natural complications during prenatal development (e.g., via miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy) or whose life is tragically lost during a medically necessary maternal surgery, in an abortion, a dead baby is never simply an unintended casualty.  Rather, in an abortion, a dead baby is always the intended outcome.

It is critical that we understand and maintain the clear distinction between these two immensely different medical scenarios.  Many people on both sides of the abortion debate, including some within the medical community, mistakenly conflate the two cases as if they’re one and the same; but this, as we have seen, is not the case.

“Due to the principle of the ‘double effect,’ surgical procedures that save the mother’s life while causing the undesired and unintended death of the preborn child are permissible, so an abortion exception to save the life of the mother is actually unnecessary.

“Pro-lifers must vigorously oppose the ‘mother’s life’ abortion exception because of the inherent dishonesty of abortionists who expand it to mean abortion on demand [for any reason, without apology, and through all nine months of pregnancy].  Additionally, if surgical procedures intended to save the life of the mother are labeled ‘abortions’ in those many countries that still have pro-life laws, people will get used to the idea of killing pre-born children much more easily, paving the way for a rapid expansion of exceptions and eventual abortion on demand.” —Brian Clowes, San Antonio Coalition for Life [emphasis mine]

 

Indeed, as was the case prior to the Roe v. Wade ruling in January 1973 when abortion was illegal in the vast majority of American states, IF abortion is eventually outlawed nationwide, it is crucial to understand that lifesaving surgeries for pregnant women would still be permitted all over America, even in those very rare cases where they would likely result in the *tragic* and *undesirable* death of an unborn child.  This is justified by a vitally important medical ethic called the “principle of double effect,” which helps physicians differentiate between direct and indirect causes of a patient’s death.  Therefore, don’t be fooled by the fear-mongering rhetoric and disinformation of desperate abortion activists and abortion providers, who frankly do not really care about women’s health.  In the plainest terms, no woman ever needs to fear being denied legitimate healthcare in any state where actual (“elective”) abortions are outlawed.

Remember, the solitary goal of an abortion is to end human life—specifically, the life of the unborn child.

Conversely, the two-fold goal of legitimate maternal healthcare is to save human life—both the mother’s life and, if at all possible, the unborn child’s life.

See the difference?  It is enormous.

May this be a strong reminder to pro-life proponents of the need to use precise language when discussing abortion.  The stakes are too high to relinquish even a single word to abortion-choice advocates.  We’ve let them get away with too much equivocating and linguistic manipulation as it is.  Let’s not be equally guilty of spreading misinformation through ignorance.

“When words lose their meaning, people lose their lives.  You have to fight for meaning; fight for every word.” —Dr. Michael Bauman

 

Recommended Resources

1) The End of the Innocents: What Everyone Needs to Know About Abortion

2) Planned Parenthood: Simply De-funding Them Isn’t Good Enough

3) Human Rights in Peril